'Bizarre': Musk Shocked As AFP Sues X For Not Compensating It For News Posted On The Platform - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Elon Musk has expressed shock over French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) suing his company, X (formerly Twitter). The lawsuit alleges that X has not engaged in discussions about paying the publisher for its news articles appearing on the platform.

What Happened: X owner Musk called the lawsuit initiated by AFP as "bizarre", in a tweet posted on Thursday.

"This is bizarre. They want us to pay *them* for traffic to their site where they make advertising revenue, and we don't!?" Musk remarked in response.

AFP's lawsuit stems from a 2019 neighboring rights legislation passed by France. It extends the copyright protection to content produced by news publishers – this includes text and videos – for a period of up to two years.

Any websites that share publishers' work are required to discuss remuneration with those publishers.

"Agence France-Presse (AFP) has expressed its concerns over the clear refusal from Twitter (recently rebranded as ‘X') to enter into discussions regarding the implementation of neighboring rights for the press," the agency said in a press release.

X Not The First To Be Sued By AFP: It is worth noting that X is not the first company to be sued by AFP – the agency had filed a case against Alphabet Inc.'s GOOGL GOOG Google back in 2020 and reached an agreement in 2021. However, Google was fined €500 million after AFP complained that Google owned 90% of the search market share and was, therefore, in a position where it could abuse power to tilt the deal in its favor.

On his part, Musk contends that AFP gets traffic from X, which boosts its advertising revenue, and X gets nothing. Given that X is not as dominant as Google, it remains to be seen how France's authorities look at it.

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